and Luthier did mention, in one interview early in the piece, that they would love to get in on a 777 type pie arrangement.

I'm sure the IC publishers and Luthiers development team looked at a number of ways to generate funds in a genre with such high costs and relatively low returns. Personally I would have liked to see to some kind of change to make the genre more profitable, so that I could expect to see continued support for the kind of sim products I'd like to see. Unfortunately when its all about profit, the sim dies, and the fluff wins. We need people like Oleg/Luthier who built sims for the love of the genre aswell as making a living. Unfortunately they've been unceremoniously cut out of the market, for a more profit based model. Its understandable but the simmer who wants more detail could lose.

I don't know what the "sweet spot" would be to find a balance between profit and sim making in today's world, but its so much harder, because of the detail demanded, and the time/money it takes to provide that detail. ROF didn't cost me alot of money as I didn't want or need to fly all the aircraft put up for sale. I usually found that I concentrated on flying a few fighter aircraft, but would gladly pay for a few highly detailed/costly to build bomber aircraft. That said I'm finding it very hard to support 777 Studios, in the underhanded way, albeit business way, they undercut the COD developers/game engine and made it near impossible for anyone else to pick up the more detailed and capable game engine for my simming needs. I understand business is business, but business drove away Oleg, now Luthier. Oleg and Luthier have probably moved on to more lucrative business, but we've lost much of the passion and vision the genre requires.